This invention relates to cellular telephones and more particularly to methods and apparatus for transmitting prerecorded phrases, sounds and messages to a remote listener during a telephone conversation.
When engaged in a telephone conversation, cellular phone users are typically confronted with the need to alert the person with whom they are speaking that, because others are nearby, the conversation cannot continue in privacy or without annoying others. In that case, the very act of explaining the problem can itself be awkward or impractical. In consequence, it would be desirable to incorporate into a cellular telephone the ability to transmit a pre-recorded message to the remote party by a pressing a button or actuating some other control on the cellular telephone.
Cellular telephones with built in audio recording and playback capabilities have been developed for performing functions including the recording and playback of dictation and telephone conversations, as well as the playback of pre-recorded announcements used to implement voice mail systems. Where such the voice recording and playback devices are already present in the cellular telephone, the needed additional functionality contemplated by the present invention can be added at little additional cost.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,029,063 issued to Parvulescu et al. describes a voice scratchpad implemented in a wireless telephone that allows the user to record important information gathered during a phone conversation. The wireless telephone includes signal processing means and memory means for recording at least one message or memo, which is spoken over the telephone. The telephone also includes controls for initiating the recording of such a memo and for retrieving and replaying the memo. Indexing may be included which allows the system to record and replay a plurality of memos. The user of the phone can thus record important information in a memo on the voice scratchpad without the need for paper or the concentration and effort required for writing.
Automatic telephone answering systems have also been developed for use with cellular phones which allow the cellular phone operator to place the phone in an automatic answering mode in which the phone answers the incoming call and automatically transmits a message to transmit specific instructions to the caller at the distant telephone. U.S. Pat. No. 5,790,957 issued to A. H. Heidari describes a cellular phone which includes a prompt transmitter which may be used to advise the person at a distant telephone to wait a moment while the cellular phone operator proceeds to another location wherein it is appropriate to lift the receiver and begin speaking. The prompt feature avoids the situation wherein a telephone caller may hang up prematurely before the intended called person has a chance to pick up the receiver and begin conversing.
The foregoing systems do not, however, allow the cellular phone operator to employ the cellular phone""s pushbutton controls to select and transmit a selected pre-recorded message to a caller during a conversation. In addition, it would be desirable to allow the cellular phone operator to transmit a repertoire of short response messages (e.g. xe2x80x9cYes,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cNo,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cMaybe,xe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cI don""t know.xe2x80x9d) that allow the remote party to ask questions to and then obtain responses from the cellular phone operator without requiring the cellular phone operator to speak.
A related problem occurs when a cellular phone user is unable to complete a call to send important information to a remote party before the cellular phone user needs to attend a meeting or otherwise be unable to conveniently complete the call. In that instance, it would be desirable to record a message to be transmitted later, along with a telephone number to be called, so that the cellular phone can later automatically place a call to that number and transmit the recorded message to the answering party, without requiring attention from the cellular phone operator.
In some cases, the need to transmit a spoken message from a cellular phone in private cannot be foreseen. It would accordingly also be desirable to provide means for storing a keyboarded message (which may consist of only one or just a few words) as text, and then employing speech synthesis to convert the keyboarded message into a spoken audio transmission that is sent to the remote party.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to selectively transmit pre-recorded messages from a cellular phone to a remote telephone.
It is a further object of the invention to permit a cellular phone operator to pre-record and transmit spoken messages at a later time.
It is a still further object of the invention to enable a cellular phone operator to employ the pushbuttons or keys on a cellular phone to select the time, destination, and content of recorded messages transmitted to a remote caller.
As contemplated by the invention, the cellular telephone preferably includes a digital memory for storing digitized voice signals and means for capturing spoken messages using the cellular phone microphone and storing those messages as a digital recording in the digital memory. The pushbuttons or keys provided on the cellular telephone are then manipulated by the operator to selected one of the pre-recorded messages for transmission to the remote caller.
The cellular telephone keypad may be used to accept keyboarded message identification labels that may later be displayed as menu items on the cellular telephone""s display to facilitate the identification and selection of previously recorded messages. In addition, the keypad and display may be used to compose text message that may later be converted into spoken audio form for transmission to a remote telephone.
The stored messages may be recorded in the voice of the caller, or may be selected from a stored library of pre-recorded audio messages, sound files, MIDI music files, or may comprise text data which can be converted to speech. These stored messages may either be entered by the caller, provided as standard stored text, which is converted to spoken form using speech synthesis.
The pre-recording audio or text messages stored in the digital memory may be selectively transmitted either during an ongoing telephone conversation at the request of the cellular phone operator, or by entering a telephone number to be called and associating that number with one or more messages and then, after a predetermined time interval or at a predetermined scheduled time, initiating the transmission of the identified message(s) when a telephone connection is successfully established between the cellular phone and the associated phone number.